None of the dozens of e-mails and voice mails I got addressing WRNO FM-99.5's introductory stunt for Rush Limbaugh's arrival from longtime local home WWL AM-870 said: What a cool idea!

WRNO welcomed Limbaugh, who defected on April 1 and who now airs there from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, with several days of long segments of a looped portion of "My City Was Gone," the early-1980s song by The Pretenders that Limbaugh has made his theme song.

The snippets were occasionally interrupted by Limbaugh trumpeting his new home - "Rush Radio 99.5 FM" -- plus Limbaugh reruns, plus live-sounding cut-ins by new WRNO morning hosts Michael Castner and Robyn Walensky.

Most aggrieved with the stunt, based on their calls and e-letters to me, were fans of WRNO afternoon syndicated host Sean Hannity.

Typical: "What happened to Sean?" wrote one once-loyal WRNO listener mid-stunt. "They have their phones busied out and & all they are broadcasting is Rush, Rush & more Rush & a lot of Rush music. I was a huge fan & would continue to be if they just ADDED Rush -- but not like it is today. Are you going to follow up what these idiots are doing?"

In fact, the WRNO staffer I felt the most sympathy for during the siege was the station's switchboard operator.

"We got everything from 'You've got to be an idiot' to 'You ought to be run out of town,'" said Dick Lewis, New Orleans market manager for WRNO parent company, Texas-based Clear Channel Communications. "By no stretch of the imagination would it be referred to as good programming."

What it was, Lewis hastened to add, was an attempt to send an audio flare above the cluttered radio dial.

"We wanted to make a very loud statement that the radio station was going to be different," he said. "The theme music is so identified with Rush, that anybody ... coming across the dial would know where Rush Limbaugh was going to be.

"Whether it has the ultimate positive payoff -- we certainly hope that it does.

"It made a very loud statement. I'm glad it didn't run any longer than it did."

It ended in time for the April 7 debut of the station's full new daytime schedule, which includes the syndicated "The Glenn Beck Program" from 9-11 a.m. and locally-hosted programs in morning and early evening.

John Osterlind, who's worked prior radio jobs in Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn. and Boston, according to his bio-blurb on the station's website, now hosts from 5-8 p.m. weekdays.

"I took a break from radio for a few years to open a bar, and help smuggle Cubans into Miami," the blurb continues. "I recently ran into the WRNO brass outside Larry Flynts' Barely Legal Club on Bourbon St., where they offered me this job."

The break from radio apparently began with a 2003 incident in which Osterlind was suspended from Boston's WRKO AM-680, where he was known as "Ozone," over an on-air discussion about Palenstinian suicide bombings.

According to a story in the Boston Herald, station management said Osterlind essentially called for "the eradication of the whole Arab race," which Osterlind later disputed.

Osterlind told the Herald he'd been misquoted by station managers.

"I may have been out of line saying the Israelis should do whatever they want with the Palestinians," Osterlind told the paper. "But to be quoted as saying I called for the eradication of the entire Arab race is completely ridiculous. I'm a peace-lovin,' fun-lovin' guy."

The bar was The Scrap Bar & Smokehouse, a popular music-and-barbecue joint in Miami.

"The (rib) racks are big, meaty, just fatty enough to be tasty, and falling-off-the-bone tender," wrote restaurant critic Pamela Robin Brandt in the Miami New Times in April 2006. "Pulled pork, available on either a sandwich or a 'smoked dinner' platter, was even better."

Meanwhile, the station's weekend lineup is almost set.

"Mostly, but not totally," Lewis said.

WRNO's web site (www.thenew995fm.com) lists a midday Sunday time slot for former weekday morning man Jim Brown. Gerry Vaillancourt's "The Gerry V. Show" has expanded an hour on Saturday morning, and Lorin Gaudin's "All Over Food" has moved to 9-11 a.m. Sunday.

Nowhere to be found is Andre Trevigne, the local TV newscaster turned radio host, who'd previously done news-talk at WWL-AM. Trevigne had been a fixture on WRNO's weekday lineup since its shift to news-talk from classic rock in November 2006.

In an interview before Rush's arrival, Lewis had said that Trevigne would "have a place" on the station after the lineup shake-up, but her departure was forced by the deal WRNO had to make with Limbaugh's syndicator - most likely the addition of Beck's show -- to get Limbaugh.